1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns the area of interior home fashion and, more specifically, a system which allows a database of essentially all available wallcovering patterns to be rapidly searched on the basis of exact spectral characteristics of foreground and background pattern colors, general pattern characteristics, and room characteristics to display high-resolution, color correct images of retrieved patterns, and render selected patterns onto photographic images of rooms.
2. Description of Related Art
Human beings are visually oriented mammals. Unlike many mammals whose primary senses are those of smell or hearing, our visual sense is primary; hence, sayings such as: "A picture is worth a thousand words." Furthermore, our vision is color sensitive and binocular (depth sensitive). There is no mistaking the importance of visual cues, especially those involving color, in our day-to-day existence. Many psychological studies have even purported to show that certain environmental colors provoke hostility and anxiety, while other (colors are conducive to rest or contemplation.
It is little wonder that so much time and money is spent on interior design and interior decorating. It is no mean feat to provide a room interior that is both pleasant to behold and occupy and, at the same time, in keeping with the function of the room. The various components of wall and ceiling color, wallcovering (i.e., wallpaper) color and pattern, window treatments (i.e., draperies and shades) color and pattern, floor covering color and pattern, and furniture style, color and pattern must all be properly coordinated to achieve a result that is both aesthetically pleasing and economically viable.
Perhaps the simplest way to obtain a coordinated room is to copy an acceptable design from a magazine or other published source. However, it is unlikely that a magazine design will fit the real needs of a consumer wishing to decorate a room. Furthermore, the consumer's room is unlikely to physically match the layout of the magazine room; nor is a magazine at all likely to provided coordinated designs for the other rooms of the consumer's home. Therefore, the usual method is to employ an interior designer and look at numerous paint and pattern samples in an attempt to select the ideal colors and patterns to coordinate the room design and furnishings, as well as the rooms' relationship with other rooms of the home.
A good interior designer is usually able to narrow down the range of samples that must be viewed, but such a designer is likely to be expensive. If the consumer attempts to save money by making his/her own selections, the process is apt to be arduous, time consuming and frustrating. If the consumer wishes to match the design parameters to "grandma's old brocaded chair," the process is likely to be nearly impossible.
Either the interior designer or the consumer must ultimately look at myriad patterns in sample books and then attempt to match them with appropriate paint colors and upholstery patterns and colors, etc. If grandma's furniture is being matched, the problem becomes even more difficult. While the majority of people have sensitive color vision and call recognize slight color mismatches when the colors are placed side by side, the vast majority of people have extremely poor color memories. Thus, to make an accurate match, the color to be matched must be physically present.
Moreover, the color quality of illumination can have a drastic effect on perceived colors. Most people have had the experience of purchasing an article at a store and then discovering that it appears to be a completely different color when taken home. Colors often appear completely different under the cool white fluorescent lighting of most stores than they do under incandescent lighting found in most homes.
There is a great need for a method to simplify the selection and matching process that presently goes on in the process of interior decorating. Sample books of wallcovering and other materials are expensive, cumbersome to use and, as mentioned above, inaccurate, unless actual samples of all the items are available for side-by-side comparison.
There have been a few attempts to utilize modern technology, such as personal computers, to improve upon the present system. Typical text-oriented databases have been used to simplify the selection problem and to track the expensive and bulky sample books. These systems are based on written descriptions of pattern structure and color. They allow the designer or consumer to search the database using a description and desired color. The program produces a list of possible patterns, along with sample book page numbers, so the actual sample can be located. The program also maintains a list of available sample books and who may have checked them out (rather like a library lending system).
However, such systems do not eliminate expensive and cumbersome sample books. All they do is suggest which books should be examined. As mentioned above, color descriptions are liable to be faulty, so that the suggested patterns may be useless even if the required sample book is available.
Another computer approach is "rendering," in which an image of a room can be altered (rendered) by the computer so that the walls, floors, and window coverings take on the appearance of desired patterns complete with natural shadows and distortions caused by perspective. Thus, the computer can make a room image give the effect of the materials chosen by the designer or the consumer. This is an ideal way to visualize a combination of patterned materials after they have been chosen. However, it does little to narrow down the gigantic number of samples from which to choose. There is generally no guarantee that the spectral results will be accurate. Furthermore, presently-available systems have only a limited universe of patterns from which to chose, since only a few hundred patterns out of the tens of thousands available are built into the systems. This means that while the present systems might be good at showing what a particular class of pattern (i.e., stripped patterns) will look like, they are unable to show the appearance of a particular pattern chosen from the sample books because they can render only the small number of patterns actually built into the particular system.